


The One Where the Losers Meet the Avengers

by weesta



Series: Mini_Wrimo Fics and Drabbles [1]
Category: Captain America, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Losers (2010)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Clay thinks he outranks Cap, Gen, Hydra (Marvel), Implied/Referenced Torture, Jake looks like Steve, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Steve looks like Jake, lol
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-02
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-02-23 14:14:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2550512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weesta/pseuds/weesta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Losers are rescued by The Avengers.  Their doctor bonds with Jake over that State Farm commercial.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The one where the Losers meet the Avengers

The events of the last few days were a blur to Cougar. That was due partly to the concussion he sustained when he realized that their captors were going to take Jake away and he tried to prevent it. All of them wound up bloody and bruised – Clay, Pooch, Aisha – and in the end, none of them were able to prevent the inevitable.

At some point in their military or mercenary careers they had all been subjected to some form of torture, be it physical or psychological. They all knew there was only so much a person could take before he snapped. Unfortunately for those locked in a room with Cougar the breaking point was never far away.

The change in circumstance finally came when Captain America himself burst through the door shouting orders at those behind him and organizing the now free captives. There was some conversation between Clay and the Captain that Cougar just wasn’t able to process; later Pooch would reenact how Clay tried to pull rank on the living legend. What it came down to was this – thanks for getting us out of this cage, but one of our guys is still a prisoner and we’re not leaving without him.

The Captain got intel through his helmet and when he left, the Losers were right behind him. He led them through a maze of corridors, down deeper and deeper into the facility. It seemed that the further they went into the ground, the more brightly lit and sterile the environment became; even in his altered state Cougar realized that these were no ordinary holding cells, this was a laboratory.

It was a measure of how off his game Cougar was, that when they finally infiltrated the room where Jake was being held, was the first time Cougar noticed the man with the silver arm. Cougar understood why the sight of Jake unconscious, strapped to a dissection table under harsh lights surrounded by obvious instruments of torture sent him off the deep end, but he didn’t know why it affected the other man so much. The animalistic scream that was wrenched out of the other man was skin crawling.

The Losers attended to Jake while the silver-armed man literally tore the place apart. Cougar noted that even at his most destructive, the crazed man did not disturb any of the machines or instruments that were directly connected to Jake.

Later Cougar would be able to recount with hyper-detail all of the steps involved in getting Jake out of the Hydra facility, but in the moment there was only noise and movement until they were on the Avenger’s jet and headed to New York. With Jake’s chest rising and falling steadily under his hand Cougar slowly came back to awareness. Jake’s utter stillness on the gurney was unnerving as was his silence. A neuro-muscular toxin had been administered to the tech that inhibited all voluntary movements.

When the jet touched down at the Tower the Avengers gave the Losers wide berth dealing with Jake. It might have had something to do with the fact that they were focused on keeping the silver-armed man watching Jake with something akin to desperation on his face seated and calm. Instead of a horde of medical personnel, only one person approached the plane and helped the Losers disembark.

What Cougar noticed right off was that the doctor wasn’t rattled. It made sense – if she was the M.D. who regularly attended the Avengers, a random soldier brought in for treatment shouldn’t throw her off her game. The fact that the random soldier was also a dead ringer for Captain America if he sported a goatee was another issue entirely.

The doctor walked alongside the gurney keeping pace with the rapid movement, asking for general information and making her own assessments. When they finally pulled into an exam room, the doctor looked over and asked Cougar, “What’s his name?”

But it was Pooch who provided, “Jake Jensen.”

The doctor looked down at Jensen and didn’t hesitate before saying, “Jake…from State Farm.”

Cougar saw Jake’s eyes widen. Though the younger man couldn’t move his arms or legs, his eyes rolled over in the doctor’s direction. He looked at her with a strange intensity and fought against the toxin controlling his muscles to grind out, “Who are you talking to?”

The doctor smiled with her eyes as she responded, “Jake…from State Farm.”

Jensen’s eyes lost the edge of hysteria that had been present since he’d regained consciousness on the flight and realized he was paralyzed. His focus was completely on the doctor. “What are you wearing, Jake from State Farm?”

The doctor was smiling now as she placed her hand on Jensen’s forearm, playing along with the script like it was something they’d rehearsed. “Uh…khakis.”

“Well, she sounds hideous.”

The doctor quirked one eyebrow at Jensen. “Well…she’s a guy, so…”

Jensen blinked and turned his gaze back toward Cougar. “This one’s okay, Cougs. Can we keep her?”

The doctor chuckled on Jensen’s other side. Cougar exchanged a glance with Pooch. If Jake could come far enough back from wherever he’d been lost in his head to exchange random dialogue with a stranger, a doctor no less, he was in much better shape than Cougar anticipated. The tendrils of anxiety that constricted Cougar’s chest and made his vocal cords as unresponsive as Jake’s muscles loosened their hold slightly.

“Jake?” The doctor’s call brought Jake’s attention back to her. She nodded to acknowledge when his gaze met hers. “I’m Doctor O’Reilly…”

“Oh Really?” Jake responded immediately. He smiled and Cougar was relieved to see it was a natural motion, not the horrible straining contortions he was making in the jet on the way to the Tower. The doctor noticed too and smiled in return.

“I’m going to do my best to get you back on your feet as soon as possible, but there are a lot of pieces to the puzzle and I’ll need your help to figure things out.”

“Puzzles, I’m good at puzzles,” Jake responded eagerly. But Cougar could see anxiety creeping back in. Cougar could only guess a little of what Jake had been put through while they’d been imprisoned on the Hydra base, and certainly that was only the tip of the iceberg. Submitting to the touch of anyone unfamiliar, anyone in a lab coat, anyone with a needle would be hugely difficult. The doctor must have been briefed on the situation because she seemed to understand all of those things and actively worked not to freak Jake out.


	2. The One Where Cookie Monster Scrubs are Awesome

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cougar observes the doctor attending to Jake and is impressed with how she handles things.

In the very brief time that the Losers had been in the Avengers’ Tower, Cougar’s appreciation of their in-house medic grew by leaps and bounds.  The fact that she connected with Jake right off the bat endeared her immediately to Cougar; the way she was able to put Jake at ease was astonishing. 

Because there was no obvious crisis medically – with breathing or blood pressure – Dr. O’Reilly didn’t insist that the room be cleared for the medical team only.  In fact, the opposite was true – except for one nurse what slipped in to assist, everyone else in the room was a Loser.  That endeared her to the rest of the team and raised her up in Cougar’s estimation; it couldn’t be easy to do her job with Aisha glaring from her perch against the window sill and Clay looming like a gargoyle near the door.   

Right after they arrived and Jake was transferred from the gurney to a bed the doctor stepped to the side of the room and opened a closet.  She slipped out of the lab coat she’d been wearing and pulled out a scrub shirt.  It was slightly oversized making it easy to slip over the long-sleeved white shirt she had on under the coat.  What surprised Cougar was that it looked like something a doctor in Pediatrics might wear; printed on a light blue background was a pattern of chocolate chip cookies, a happily grinning Cookie Monster and the words “nom, nom” scattered across. 

Jake followed the doctor with his eyes, hyper-aware of the stranger in his space although she’d been nothing but calm and kind.  Cougar could see Jake’s tension ease slightly as the lab coat vanished into the closet; and he managed something close to an actual smile when the doctor slipped the colorful scrubs over her head.

The doctor caught Jake’s eye as her head popped through the hole and she smiled in return as she approached the bed yanking the shirt into position with one hand and looping the stethoscope around her neck with the other.  She shrugged as she explained, “Lab coats make some people uncomfortable.”

“I’m surprised you don’t have superhero themed ones,” Pooch called out from the chair he’d claimed.

O’Reilly laughed.  “Actually, I have an extensive collection – people tend to give me scrubs as gifts, the crazier the better.  And now that I’m working here…” she gestured to the room around them indicating the tower,  “you can bet the super hero ones have been rolling in!” She reached down and plucked the front of the shirt she was wearing. “I stash them all over. This just happen to be the one on hand in this room.” 

 “I like it!” Jake declared.

“Then we’re good.”  O’Reilly approached the bed, hooking a rolling stool with one foot and pulling it along with her. The doctor made sure that when she spoke, she addressed Jake. 

“Now that you’re settled, the first thing I’d like to do is get a blood sample so we can see exactly what’s in your system.”

Jake’s eyes cut away, but he nodded slightly in agreement even as he frowned.  Cougar appreciated that the doctor didn’t launch into anything remotely like “I can only imagine what you’ve been through” or talk down to Jake in the face of his discomfort.

Bruising was clearly evident on Jake’s wrists where he’d been restrained.  There were multiple injection sites on his arms as well; some were neatly placed and bandaged while others were bruised as if the person in charge didn’t care much about what was being forced into or taken out of Jake’s bloodstream.

The doctor seated herself on the stool and rolled close to the bed.  She placed her left hand in Jake’s lax left hand and prompted softly, “Can you squeeze my hand?”  Though Jake’s fingers twitched slightly, there was no power in his grip.

“Not yet…okay,” O’Reilly noted.  She pulled her hand free and placed it on Jake’s forearm well above the bruising around his wrist.  She must have squeezed it because she asked, “Can you feel that?”

“Pressure.”  Jake responded.  “Warm.”

“Great,” the doctor responded.  She kept her hand on Jake’s arm as she made eye-contact again.  “From what little we know, it seems that you’re being affected by a neuromuscular inhibitor.  In the short time you’ve been here I’ve already seen progress as it's starting to wear off, but we’ll have a better idea of how to address it if we know exactly what’s in your system.”

O’Reilly looked down slightly and nodded to herself as though making a decision.  She twisted slightly to turn away from Jake and address the room.  “Would any of you happen to have medical training?”

“Cougar does!” Jake immediately croaked out. 

The doctor turned and looked speculatively at Cougar.  The rest of the Losers looked worse for wear to Cougar’s eye and he was certainly in worse shape than they were; he could only imagine what he looked like to O’Reilly.

“Si, I have training as a field medic.”  Cougar could see Pooch’s eyes widen when his answer surpassed more than one syllable, but Jake needed him to speak, so he did.

The doctor nodded.  “Alright.”  Again she looked like she was having an internal conversation.  Then she came to a conclusion.  She stood up and reached for the blood pressure cuff on the wall.  “Let’s check this first…”  Satisfied with the numbers that presented themselves, she continued.

“Here’s what we’re going to do.  You…” she nodded at Cougar, “are going to scrub your hands and arms in the sink over there.  Twice.”  Cougar stood up straighter and nodded.  The doctor looked speculative and changed her mind.  “Three times.  Then gloves and mask.  Then you’re going to get three vials of blood from Jake here and start an IV.”  Cougar nodded again.

She swiveled on her chair to include Jake.  “That good with you?”

“Yeah, yeah…if Cougar…that’s okay…”

Cougar felt like he’d been released from the paralysis that had gripped him since Jake was first taken away.  With an assignment…knowing he could actually do something to help Jake…the weight of the last few days fell away and Cougar felt revitalized. Before he stepped away from the bed, Cougar caught Jake’s eye. He nodded his head under his hat.  _I got this._

Jake slow-blinked in return, relief and gratitude evident on his face.  _I know._

* * *

 

Here are the scrubs. If I was a doctor I would have an insane collection of these!

_ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since I wrote the first part of this fic last year during mini_nano, this doctor character has really stuck with me. So, I decided to keep rolling with this wee crossover 'verse.

**Author's Note:**

> I just love the idea of someone having the "Jake...from State Farm" conversation with Jake. It had to be done. Plus...word count for mini_wrimo. \0/


End file.
